


The Story of Subway Creeper, aka how Bucky Barnes got his act together and found his soulmate

by TheDreamingSpires



Series: art for the soul [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Multi, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, bad geographical knowledge of NYC, subway creeps
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-24
Updated: 2016-09-24
Packaged: 2018-08-17 01:40:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,419
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8125543
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheDreamingSpires/pseuds/TheDreamingSpires
Summary: Despite his best intentions, Bucky goes from grumpy engineer living in a hipster's paradise of an apartment with his caustic best friend to a gooey sap with a near saint for a soulmate.And to think, it would never have happened without the intervention of some complete whack jobs on the subway.





	

Bucky had a naked guy on his arm.

He had no idea how long it had been there, or who had noticed it, although now the glare he’d got from the old lady he’d held the door open for at Starbucks kind of made sense. If he’d seen some moron prancing around the city with a naked guy, complete with detailed genitalia, in full view on their lower arm, he’d have been pretty judgemental too.

Especially considering he’d been absent-mindedly rubbing the spot on his wrist where the charm on his bracelet normally fell, so it probably looked like he had a fetish for jerking off a tattoo.

As it was, Bucky had to roll down the sleeves on his button down and jabbed at his phone, switching from his texts to his notes app to add the naked guy to his master-list of ‘Weird Shit I’ve Been Subjected to by My One and Only’. The list was worryingly long, considering if Bucky ever met the person at the other end of the old-school dick pic, he was meant to want to spend the rest of his life with them.

For the millionth time since his soulmark had come in when he was eighteen, Bucky wished it hadn’t been somewhere so obvious. He knew that Nat’s was on her ribcage, easily hidden by basically every item of clothing she owned except for her bikini. Not that she hadn’t bitched about that for an age – at one point, it had been so unbearable that Bucky had tried to submit, _“bye bye, bikinis”_ as her senior quote. Coincidentally, that was also the day he learned she legitimately did take taekwondo lessons, and didn’t just use it as an excuse to get out of helping him babysit his sister on Friday nights.

It wasn’t as if Nat’s soulmark needed covering, anyway. Her soulmate drew cubes on cubes on cubes, always a little skew-whiff but harmless none the same.

Bucky would have killed for a cube right about now.

Instead, he got masterpieces. The first one he’d got had been a shock – a monkey on a unicycle stretching from his inner elbow down to the strap of his watch. A speech bubble scratched effortlessly on his upper arm, but no writing inside it, because soulmarks couldn’t reproduce writing, and wasn’t that a bitch.

It would be one thing if you could see everything your soulmate drew, if it also meant you could chat to them. Shit, if you could just write your full name or a contact number. Instead, most people were stuck with doodles, and random ones at that. There was no way of knowing if what you were currently drawing was ending up on some innocent bastard’s ass cheek or not.

It wasn’t so much the unicycling monkey that had given Bucky pause for thought, but that he had a soulmate at all. Most people got their first drawing through their mark when they were about fourteen, some younger. From the age of about ten, people started drawing things maniacally, desperate that something would make it through the aether and end up on their soulmate’s body. There was a reason art classes were always oversubscribed – people wanted to be good enough to get in contact with their soulmate, to draw something actually recognisable.

Bucky hadn’t got anything until he was twenty, leaving him with the unpleasant assumption that he was one of the unmarked. Scientists guessed that around 10% of people were unmarked, an NBC poll suggested more like 5%. At about sixteen, Bucky had given up hope of a soulmate. It wasn’t that those without soulmates didn’t find love. Some people rejected their soulmates, and there were always people who didn’t have a mark either, but Bucky had always kind of wanted to have one. His parents had been soulmates, his sister had found hers in senior year when she’d happened to come into art class late and ended up sat next to the new kid. So, at this point, basically the only thing that Bucky knew was that his soulmate was younger than him, or for some reason had suddenly taken up drawing late in life.

Either way, it didn’t look hopeful.

By the time Bucky was twenty-two, he’d been getting pretty decent approximations of Munch and Van Gogh on his arm, on one occasion a full-colour Canaletto that had actually got him a date with a cute TA. When he thought too hard about that, he felt seedy as shit. He’d literally used something his soulmate created to get laid. Natasha still hadn’t let that go, either. If he ever met the soulmate, he was pretending Natasha was locked away in an insane asylum, or backpacking in Nepal or something. Never was that story going to get out.

The naked man, however, was new. Most of the embarrassing shit he had to deal with took the form of caricatures of people he didn’t know, cartoon animals, or on one notable occasion a detailed and realistic drawing of Donald Trump with a dunce’s cap. God only knows what that was about.

 

Bucky had been standing on the platform waiting for the subway for almost ten minutes when it finally arrived, and as he rushed into the thankfully quiet compartment he subconsciously shoved his sleeve back up again. Subways were fucking hot, and the lunchtime heat of mid-July New York wasn’t helping anyone. He noticed the mistake in a matter of seconds, ripping his sleeve back down as though it had burned him, before glancing furtively around. Remarkably, considering the shit luck Bucky seemed to carry around like a particularly hideous shawl, the group of school kids sitting and listening to their teacher drone on about MOMA hadn’t noticed. Neither had an elderly German couple, bickering over their guidebook, or the girl that Bucky saw nearly every day, as usual wearing a New England Patriots t-shirt and nodding her head along to whatever the hell was playing from her oversized iPhone. Then again, in Bucky’s experience, she never really noticed anything, unless they literally sat down in her lap, as he had once done when his grip on the central pole hadn’t been as great as he’d thought. She’d been weirdly cool about that, considering.

Thanking the gods in all their omniscient splendour, Bucky went back to texting Natasha about his newest artwork, trying to work out whether he could feasibly take a Snapchat without giving the poor old German lady an eyeful. After a moment, some strange, twisted, primal part of his brain starts shrieking, and he realised that there were eyes on him. He ignored it as someone trying to read the words printed on his lanyard, which had been the explanation last time he had gone psycho on a random person gazing at him on public transport. You had to get your kicks somewhere, and on the subway sometimes people watching was the best way. It wasn’t as though Bucky himself hadn’t created a whole life for the curvy brunette who he saw in the queue at the Chinese takeout every Saturday. For a moment, he let the mystery person look at him. Then a camera flashed, and he looked up quickly.

Standing by the doors opposite him and trying to look as inconspicuous as possible was a brick shithouse of a man. His physique said athlete, and his dark skin was completely unblemished by artwork. His button-down and neat jeans didn’t exactly scream nutjob, but then you had to be careful, especially in New York. Bucky was simultaneously jealous, as he was of anyone who’s soulmark wasn’t _right there all the time_ , and kind of attracted to him.

Or at least he would have been, if Señor Creep-a-lot hadn’t just taken a picture of him without asking.

“I would say ‘take a picture, it’ll last longer’, but you seem to have decided on that by yourself.” Bucky sat up straight, shoving his phone in his pants pocket and staring the guy straight in the eyes. The guy had the good grace to look ashamed, at least, rubbing his hands on his jeans before meeting Bucky’s gaze.

“Man, I can totally explain.”

“Try me.” A couple of the schoolkids had turned in their direction, but no one else seemed to give a damn about what was going on. Bucky tried to remember whether or not it was illegal to harass someone about their marks. He was pretty sure you could get a fine, which although he knew he’d never go for made him smirk with glee.

“I have a friend,” the guy began, before rubbing his eyes tiredly with balled up hands. He looked kind of like he wished he could be anywhere else, which Bucky kind of understood, but it wasn’t as though Bucky had prompted this exchange. Bucky wasn’t the crazy guy from the public transport system you posted on Reddit about, this guy was. “I have a friend, right, who draws.”

“Lucky you,” replied Bucky.

“No, man, you see, I have a friend who draws shit like _that_.” He clarified his statement by pointing exaggeratedly at Bucky’s arm, catching the girl with the headphones’ attention and causing her to look at Bucky’s, now covered, arm as well. Seeing nothing of note, she pulled a face at the guy and moved down a few seats. Bucky felt vindicated. At least someone else knew he wasn’t the crazy here.

Bucky raised his eyebrows and folded his arms across his chest. Much as he was loathe to admit it, there were a shit-tonne of people who drew naked guys for fun. You just had to go to MOMA to see them all crouched around the marble statues, scribbling away. Maybe he should show his arm to the teacher, ask if she recognised it. At least that would give the kids something to talk about at school on Monday. “I’m sure he does, but that doesn’t mean you can just take my picture. Could you delete the photo, and we’ll just let it go?”

“No!” the guy took a step towards Bucky, muttering something under his breath. “Seriously, I know someone who draws _just like that_.” He scrabbled in his satchel, which Bucky totally would have made a snide comment about by now, apart from the fact that the dude looked like he could take on a small tank and win. “My name’s Sam Wilson, I work at the VA,” he produced a business card, shoving it at Bucky. “Please, dude, just let me call my friend. I swear on my Chipotle loyalty card, he drew that.”

Bucky stared at the business card, and then back at Sam, who waved the card closer to Bucky’s nose. Fuck, but was Bucky tempted. Even if this turned out to be a wild goose chase, if he didn’t give it a go he might spend the rest of his life thinking _what if_. Soulmarks on arms and other easily visible locations were rare – maybe this was a sign from the universe that his years of putting up with people assuming he had a really weird taste in tattoos were all going to be worth it?

“No offence, dude, but you seem bat-shit crazy.” Bucky looked up to see who was speaking, and realised that Patriots girl had taken out her earbuds and was sizing them up. “Just ask the dude for a picture, jeez.”

Sam turned to look at the girl, mouth opening and closing like a fish. She pulled another face at him, turning her iPhone to snap a picture of his gaping. “Seriously, you’re the reason no one wants to take the subway.” Bucky smirked gratefully at her.

Finally, as the tannoy announced the next stop, Sam came to a decision. “Steve Rogers, works at Columbia. Big guy, blond, blue eyes.” Sam crossed his arms over his chest. “That’s who drew your mark.”

The doors opened and Sam marched out, already on his phone. Bucky and Patriots girl sat in silence as they pulled away from the station.

“He didn’t delete that photo, you know,” Patriots girl announced a moment later.

Bucky laughed self-deprecatingly, running a hand through his hair. Seriously, why did this happen to him? “No, I guess he didn’t.” He leaned forwards, across the aisle, to offer her a handshake. “Bucky Barnes, thanks for dealing with the crazy for me.”

“Carol Danvers, and it’s my pleasure. Honestly.”

 

***

 

Somehow, in becoming BFFs with Natasha, Bucky had managed to make friends with the only person in the known universe who didn’t like bagels. If he’d realised quite how much of a drag a bagel-hating friend was, he’d have asked Natasha way earlier about her bread preferences. Bucky was no fool, though, and so as he and Carol climbed off the subway at the same station, he suggested a bagel outing.

Carol, as it turned out, loved bagels. She sat opposite him, ripping apart a falafel bagel, waving a bit of lettuce around as she (grudgingly) conceded that New York bagels were better than their Bostonian counterparts. Not that she’d accept that New York had anything else better than Boston. As she’d announced as soon as they’d sat down, “you wouldn’t get a creeper on the subway back home.”

Bucky laughed as she continued to expel the virtues of a city she had for some reason chosen to leave, watching as she tapped out a text. Not that he could talk – he’d spent longer telling Carol about Natasha than he had about himself. It wasn’t that creepy, he figured. Natasha was pretty damn cool, and best friends are like moms – they can boast as much as they want. After a while, he excused himself to the bathroom, leaving his phone and coat at the table to show he wasn’t going to climb out the bathroom window or something, which was kind of redundant here, but Bucky was a serial dater and it was a force of habit by now.

As soon as he got back, Carol fixed him with a considering look, absent-mindedly twiddling the pendant on her necklace. “You should totally Facebook stalk Subway Creeper’s friend.”

“No,” replied Bucky with a laugh.

“Why not?”

“Because I am neither desperate nor suicidal.” He gave her his best charming grin, the one that normally made girls bite their lips and twiddle their hair, but just got him a grimace from Carol. “How about you show me more pictures of your cat?”

Carol’s hand instinctively flew to her phone, but she retracted it before she even got to the lock screen. “Sneaky there, Barnes. Almost had me, but unfortunately for you I know people far sneakier.”

Bucky sat back in his chair and wondered how the hell he had ended up sitting in a hole in the wall bagel shop opposite a woman he barely knew, discussing his love life. Admittedly, it was better than Natasha. Marginally.

“It’s worth a go, dude.  He could be your soulmate. Or, you know, it could get you laid,” she appraised him silently, leaning towards him. “I mean, Subway Creeper was _lickable_. If you’re lucky, whoever the hell Steve Rogers is could be too. If not, at least he has some kind of artistic talent,” she smirked, looking scarily like the picture of her cat after he ate one of her socks. “You know, talented fingers. You should be up for that.”

Okay, no better than Natasha. Sadly, no worse, either. Bucky had the shittiest taste in friends. Maybe he should see a therapist or something. Or, you know, take up a hobby which meant his friends didn’t all come from the waiting rooms of police stations or the subway. Bucky croaked at her in disgust as she cackled. “I’m not having a one night stand with someone who’s friend is literally called Subway Creeper.”

“Subway Creeper is beyond the point,” she shook her head as though he was being the unreasonable one. “Steve Rogers, however, is important. Google him!”

Bucky grumbled a bit more, Carol whined a bit more, and eventually Carol’s phone rang. Whoever she was talking to, she didn’t seem overly happy, and after a moment she hung up, but not before grumbling, “yeah, fuck you too, Stark.” Apologising profusely, she backed out of the café, but not before scribbling her phone number down on a napkin.

Bucky stayed put for a while, nursing the last of his coffee and reconsidering his life choices. Eventually, he stood up and wandered home, blocking all thoughts of Steve Rogers from his mind.

 

***

 

“James?” called Natasha.

Bucky ignored her. She knew he was in the shower, knew that today hadn’t been great for him. Not that he’d mentioned Subway Creeper or the _possible soulmate_ or anything. Carol had used up his entire patience with discussing why he didn’t want to try and contact Steve, Natasha could stay in the dark for a bit longer.

It wasn’t so much that he didn’t want to contact Steve, it was that he didn’t want the inevitable disappointment when Steve turned out not to be his. What the hell was he meant to say to him anyway? ‘Hey, your “lickable”, slightly creepy friend thinks we might be soulmates?’. That would just get poor Steve’s hopes up too.

Shit, Subway Creeper. Or, as he was trying to train himself, _Sam_. He’d definitely tell Steve about Bucky, wouldn’t he? He even had his picture – Carol was right, Sam hadn’t deleted it. Even now, some dude could be trying to track him down. Or, worse, could have seen the photo and recognised his drawing on Bucky’s arm, and decided to give him a miss.

If Bucky seized up a little at that thought, it was between him and the ridiculously large collection of shampoo bottles that seemed to congregate in the shower.

“James?” Natasha seemed more insistent this time, knocking on the door with imperious, quick raps.

“What?” he yelled back, turning the water off. It wasn’t helping anymore, anyway.

“Can you come out?”

Bucky grumbled, wrapping a towel around his waist and storming over to the door, avoiding looking at the naked guy on his arm in the mirror. Natasha was leaning against the wall opposite the bathroom door, wearing her pyjamas and bunny slippers. Dangling out of one hand was her phone, encased in its newest novelty cover. This one was white, embellished with a blue octopus and the words ‘What’s kraken?’. In her other hand was a napkin – the one Carol had written her number on earlier. Bucky had screwed it up and thrown it in the trash, having already programmed it into his phone.

“What’s this?” Natasha asked, wiggling the napkin in Bucky’s direction in a very similar manner to how Sam had tried to give out his business card.

“A napkin,” Bucky tried for dumb, then remembered the lecture Natasha had given him last time about how it wasn’t cute. What the hell, he thought numbly, she was going to make her point anyway.

“Whose number is this?”

“Her name is Carol, I met her on the subway.”

Natasha nodded thoughtfully, then turned and walked away. Bucky let her go, already on his way back into his room.

 

***

 

Two weeks later, Bucky ventured out of his bedroom at the unmistakeable smell of pizza. He’d had a long night in his office, desperately trying to get the morons at Red Room Engineering to _listen to common sense,_ dammit. By the time he’d got home, he’d been too tired to grab anything to eat, and pretty pissed off – he’d got used to spending his Friday evening commute with Carol, bitching about co-workers the other one didn’t know, and scoping out anyone who came close who could possibly be Sam or the elusive Steve. Having his whole Friday evening stolen out from under him just because his boss didn’t appreciate the marketing value in bringing out a product in a variety of colours tended to bring out the worst in him.

Although, if he was honest with himself, that wasn’t the real reason he was feeling pretty crap about the world right now. Just as he’d possibly come a step closer to his soulmate with the entrance of Sam Wilson, the suggestion that his soulmate was _right here in New York and possibly even used the B line_ dangled in front of his unsuspecting nose like a carrot on a stick, the world had decided to be its normal, contrary, shitty self and take it all away again. His soulmate, it appeared, had stopped drawing. Worst of all, he’d stopped drawing _almost immediately after Bucky had met Sam._

If that wasn’t enough to put the fear of God into someone, Bucky had no idea what was. Had Sam shown Steve the picture, only for Steve to snort in derision/run away screaming/wet himself in shock? If it hadn’t been Steve’s drawing, then surely nothing would have changed – the real soulmate would have continued drawing, none the wiser, still living in blissful ignorance in a riverboat in Amsterdam or townhouse in the French Quarter or something. (Bucky liked to think that if his soulmate wasn’t lucky enough to live in New York, they at least lived somewhere respectably cool). Therefore, as the drawings _had_ stopped almost immediately after the run-in with Sam, surely that meant that Steve _was_ Bucky’s soulmate.

And, for some reason, Steve had rejected him.

And wasn’t that just the king of all kicks in the nuts.

Skulking into the kitchen in his Stormtrooper pyjama bottoms and a t-shirt from a Bruce Springsteen show he’d been to a few years back with Nat and his sister, he immediately burrowed into the fridge, chuckling smugly when he found one of Nat’s leftover beers and grabbing a bag of salad so he could at least pretend that he was a functioning adult who survived on more than pizza alone. As he span around, slamming the fridge door shut with his hip, he found himself face to face with Natasha, who was standing in the doorway, pizza box in one hand and generously filled wine glass in the other.

“I was beginning to think you were dead,” she said conversationally, ignoring his deer in the headlights expression. “Or that you’d found a new best friend and dumped me.”

Bucky waved his bag of salad at her in a way he hoped conveyed suitable irritation, but realistically made him look a bit manic. “I was at work, Nat. I promise. Everything’s going to shit, and apparently I’m the only one who’s noticed.” He turned back towards the counter in search of a plate, “or at least the only one who gives a rat’s ass.”

Natasha gave him a vaguely sympathetic look, and sashayed back into the living room. Bucky traipsed after her, feeling a little like a lost puppy as he curled up on the sofa, leaving Nat to sit regally in the overstuffed armchair they’d bought on a particularly wet Sunday after finals in their senior year. They chewed pizza in silence for a moment, Bucky discarding the bag of salad unceremoniously over the side of the sofa.

“What’s up, James?” Nat asked softly after a moment, wiping her fingers delicately on a _Happy New Year!_ napkin left over from the building’s party a few months previously. “I haven’t seen you down like this for years. I’m worried.”

Bucky rolled from his foetal position on the sofa to look her in the eye, briefly considering brushing everything off, pretending it was all about work. They gazed at each other for a moment, both refusing to budge, until Bucky (as usual) caved first. The whole past two weeks came out in a torrent of verbal diarrhoea - Subway Creeper aka Sam, the very real possibility of Steve being his soulmate. God, he hadn’t even properly told her about Carol – just mentioned her name in an off-hand way every so often, which didn’t seem very fair on someone who was realistically his second best friend considering their now-standing Wednesday lunch date and their almost nightly shared rides home.

By the time he got to the end of his diatribe, Nat had eaten the entirety of the pizza, her ninja-like reflexes apparently unhindered by her best friend’s breakdown. Bucky looked at her expectantly as she sipped her wine, considering whether or not she was about to go apoplectic and start flinging things at him, or perhaps start giggling like the boozy middle aged woman they both dreamed of being.

“So you’ve not replaced me with Carol?” she asked mildly, placing her wine glass back on her personalised ‘BAMF’ coaster.

“What? That’s all you’ve taken away from this whole situation? That I don’t like Carol more than you? God, Nat, this isn’t the third grade,” Bucky huffed, pulling himself back up into a seated position.

“No, that’s just my opening gambit,” she replied, wrinkling her nose. “My real question is more along the lines of _were you dropped on your head as an infant_? This guy was serious enough about that drawing looking familiar that he took a photo of you, a pretty damn scary looking dude, on the subway and then _tried to give you his business card_ , and you turned it away because he ‘seemed like a creeper’?”

“Carol said it was fine,” he muttered in response.

“Carol also, according to you, thinks Boston accents are sexy rather than grating, so I don’t know why we’re even deigning mention that she _has_ an opinion, let alone what it is.”

Bucky cracked a smile. “You’re jealous.”

She bristled immediately. “I’m not _jealous_ , James. I’m the oldest friend you have and I’m trying to protect you from a probable lifetime of ‘what ifs’ if you never find your soulmate. You came so close, and now you’ve conceivably fucked it up at the last hurdle.”

“I’m not the one who stopped drawing,” he pointed out, attempting to be reasonable. “That was totally him.”

“Think about this from Steve’s side, Barnes. He gets home one night to find that his friend has a _photo_ of something he drew, on some random dude’s arm. ‘ _Thank balls for the B line_ ’, he shouts-”

“Probably the first one ever to do so,” Bucky interrupted, earning himself the dirtiest glare he’d seen Natasha dole out in a long time.

“And then his friend breaks the news to him that the hot, kind of homeless looking guy on the B line rejected any attempts at contact. Steve is heartbroken, ‘ _but_!’ says the friend, full of hope, ‘ _I told him your name and where you go to school, he can totally Facebook you_ ’.”

Her voice broke a little, as she tucked a lock of hair behind her ear and started stacking plates to go back into the kitchen. “But no one ever Facebooks Steve, and so he is left in the cold. If the person who, he now knows, is definitely his soulmate has no interest in getting in contact with him, why should he keep drawing, when it’s obviously going to be badly received?”

Bucky watched in slight confusion as Natasha got up and stormed into the kitchen, crashing around as she stacked the dishwasher and set it off. She marched back through the living room towards her bedroom once she was done, deliberately avoiding eye contact with Bucky.

He sat there staring into space for a little longer, before swearing quietly to himself and wandering off to bed. One day soon, he was doing to have to make a definitive list of the shittiest, weirdest days of his life. Today would definitely rank.

 

***

 

The next morning, Bucky woke up to a text from Carol demanding that he meet her for breakfast. Natasha’s door was still firmly closed, and Bucky fought down the urge to throw it open and apologise for being such as asshat, desperately reminding himself of the agreement they had made following the Great Spatula Accident of ’07 that if a bedroom door was closed it _damn well stayed closed, god dammit._ With a final wistful glance at Natasha’s closed door, he left the apartment as quietly as he could, hoping that she’d be out of her funk by the time he got back so that he could apologise/be yelled at appropriately.

He arrived at the bagel shop before Carol and ordered his normal, curling himself up in the corner of the bar and peering out of the door to watch for her. She appeared a few moments later, dressed in an oversized sweatshirt emblazoned with Air Force insignia and jeans that Bucky was pretty sure were more cat hair than denim at this point.

As she approached the counter and waved at him, he clocked her slightly disgruntled expression, but only realised that she had company when she slid into the seat next to him and put her purse on the ground so that the man who had come into the shop behind her could sit next to her.

Not that he was just any man, though. Bucky would have been totally cool with sussing out some new boyfriend and reporting back to her later whether they were an ass or not – hell, he’d jump at the chance to see what actually was Carol’s type, as from what he could tell he definitely wasn’t, much to his initial chagrin. No, this man was all too familiar at second glance, and Bucky felt his heart get a little colder.

Bucky threw Carol a look which he hoped demonstrated his deep feelings of betrayal and general pissed-off-ness, before crossing his arms defiantly across his chest. “Nothing better to do with your Saturday morning than gate-crash an invite-only brunch, Wilson?”

Sam raised his arms in what was obviously meant to be a placating fashion, eyes flicking across to Carol, who continued to ignore him and instead gaze sightlessly at the menu. As if she didn’t already know exactly what she wanted, it wasn’t as though she ever strayed from her normal three options. Traitor. “Look, I get that this isn’t exactly how you planned on spending your Saturday, but please hear me out. I really need to speak to you.”

Bucky pulled a face which was meant to be defiant, but Sam apparently took as an invitation to continue. “I want to talk about Steve.” He paused, apparently waiting for Bucky to say something. When Bucky remained impassive, he forged on. “He’s your soulmate, Bucky. I know he is.”

“Remarkable how you think you have this amazing insight into my life when we’ve literally met once,” Bucky snarked. “I get it, your friend likes to draw nudies. Thing is, so do half the perverts on this planet. I honestly don’t believe that you can get a read on who my soulmate is from _one drawing_.”

“But it isn’t just one drawing, Bucky,” murmured Carol, nibbling on her thumbnail. Bucky narrowed his eyes at her, ignoring Sam’s hopeful nodding.

“What do you mean, Danvers?”

“I mean that even though you’re refusing to Facebook stalk a possible soulmate, doesn’t mean I can’t,” she replied defiantly. “I just wanted to _see,_ Bucky. To see if I could count this guy out.”

Bucky’s jaw dropped. A little bit of him considered how he had, just a moment ago, been excited at the idea of judging a new boyfriend of Carol’s. But this was _different_. This was space she hadn’t been invited in to, mostly because he wasn’t comfortable there himself. “Wait, you’re saying that you _set this up_? Have you been sending pictures of my soulmark to a man we’ve been calling Subway Creeper, and not in an affectionate way?”

“I mean, obviously we set this up,” replied Carol in confusion. “Sam’s more of a waffle man, he’d never come here on his own accord.”

Bucky let out a wordless screech, startling the elderly waitress who had finally wandered over to take their orders. “For fuck’s sake Carol, you’re meant to be my friend. Friends don’t do _this_ behind each other’s backs. When were you even _taking_ photos of my soulmark?”

“That’s just it,” Sam interjected, apparently taking pity on Carol, who was now sitting looking pretty stricken. “Carol got in contact with me because you stopped getting drawings, and she was worried. There’s nothing to take photos of, because your soulmate stopped drawing.”

Bucky continued to glare, pretended that having his complete lack of soulmate contact pointed out by a near stranger didn’t sting like hell.

“That’s the thing, Bucky,” said Carol, quietly. “Steve’s broken his arm. He can’t write, or type properly, or even open the front door without some serious thought. He definitely can’t draw.”

Bucky stared at them for a moment longer, then stood up and marched out the door.

 

***

 

Bucky had Facebook for two very distinct reasons. Firstly, he liked to have a point of contact with family members which involved not having to give his phone number out to old ladies who would try and set him up with their hairdresser’s niece. Secondly, he liked to peer at people he went to high school with in the dead of night when he couldn’t sleep, assess whether his life was better than theirs, whether he was more successful, more handsome, just _more_. As such, his Facebook was carefully maintained. His profile picture was a thing of beauty, probably the best photo of himself ever taken, a candid snap of him sitting at the tiki themed bar in Midtown that he liked to take dates to. It had been Nat who had taken the picture, on a night when they’d both been drowning their sorrows, bemoaning their mutual lack of love lives. Not that Dustin from 12 th grade English knew that, though. No, what outsiders saw was a thriving New Yorker, living the high life in one of the best cities in the world.

The minute he got home, he logged into Facebook on his laptop (bigger screen meant higher resolution stalking) and finally did what he’d been promising he wouldn’t do weeks. He tapped Steve’s name into the search bar, half expecting there to be a bolt of lightning or something as he recognised the face of his soulmate.

Instead, he got the face of a middle aged black man who worked in Cincinnati and was apparently friends with a guy from down the hall in his freshman dorm. Immediately below him was another Steve Rogers who lived in Tuscaloosa and apparently worked for his sister’s friend. By the third Steve Rogers he had some vague connection with, Bucky realised it was just a really common name. Even with the added filter of Columbia, there were still more than he really wanted to trawl through.

Refusing to admit defeat, he considered everything he knew about the man, and realised that the sensible thing to do would really be to _call Carol_. His pride, however, stopped him in his tracks. Carol had crossed a line – this was about him. For God’s sake, if Carol could find Subway Creeper again, then he could damn well find Steve.

 And dammit, wasn’t that his lightning strike. If he were a cartoon character, an oversized lightbulb would have started flashing neon over his head. _Subway Creeper._

Bucky backspaced through Steve’s name, replacing it with ‘Sam Wilson’. Again, there were a few options, but he recognised the happy-go-lucky smile and the faultless physique immediately. Facebook’s mindless assertion that they had one mutual friend, Carol Danvers, was completely unnecessary.

He paused to take stock for a moment. He’d found Sam, and that meant Steve was only a few clicks and some light stalking away. Steve, the guy who was probably his soulmate. Steve, who had broken his arm and so stopped drawing, who hadn’t immediately seen Bucky’s photo and retched as he’d feared. Or at least, it seemed unlikely that he had, given that Sam had basically risked life and limb by gate-crashing a brunch on his behalf. Well, maybe not life and limb, but Bucky could reasonably have thrown ketchup on him or something.

With a deep breath, Bucky clicked on Sam’s friend list, and started to type in Steve’s name. He covered his eyes with one hand before hitting enter, because he was a grown man and could admit when he was so freaked out he was about to wet himself. He waited like that for a bit, gazing into the darkness of his own hand, half persuading himself to look and half talking himself out of it.

“Nat?” he called out cautiously, hand still firmly clamped over his eyes like the monkey emoji that Carol was so fond of. “Nat, are you out there?”

He waited for a second, then heard the telltale shuffle of Natasha’s slippers on the hardwood floor as she came up behind the sofa he was sitting on. “What do you want, Barnes?”

Bucky patiently explained the whole situation to her, from the gut-punch of seeing Sam at brunch all the way through to how Carol, who he’d honestly believed was on his side, had been cavorting with the enemy from the get-go. As his story went on, he felt her sit down next to him and relax a little, and he hoped that whatever had happened between them earlier was forgiven. “So now what I need you to do is to look and see if anyone has come up on my search for Steve Rogers, as I think if I try and do it I’m either going to chicken out or be sick.”

“James,” Nat began, before he interrupted her.

“And if there isn’t anyone there, well then I’m not entirely sure what I’ll do, as I know I don’t want to ask Carol or Sam about any of this, as Carol will just say _I told you so_ and Sam’ll get all weird. I mean, the guy was weird when I was a potential soulmate on the subway, so what the hell would he be like now?”

“James, for the love of god, he’s here.”

“What?” Bucky dropped his hand from his eyes and peered at the laptop screen. Nat had moved it onto her own lap when she’d sat down next to him, but now she angled it so that he could look at it properly.

On the screen was a profile under the name of Steve Rogers, TA at Columbia, home town NYC. His cover photo showed the view from the Top of the Rock, with a gang of people huddled in the corner – one of them he recognised as Sam, the others were strangers. It wasn’t a particularly good photo, and so Bucky flicked his eyes to Steve’s profile picture, and felt his mouth go dry. He was sitting on a picnic blanket in the park, smiling happily at the camera. The main was built like a wall, but there was still something graceful about him, more how Bucky imagined Batman than Arnold Schwarzenegger. His blonde hair was a little mussed, highlighting the bright blue of his eyes. It was the smile that really got Bucky, though. It looked innocent, and good, and pure. Basically the complete opposite of the smiles of everyone Bucky knew – he knew he smiled like he wanted something, and Nat smiled like she knew something you didn’t. Steve, though, smiled like he wanted to infect the world with joy.

He didn’t realise he’d said that out loud until Nat snorted. “God, Barnes, really? One photo and you’re hooked?”

“I—,” Bucky was saved from a doubtlessly horrendous ribbing courtesy of his best friend by the shrill screech of his phone. He scrambled off the sofa and across the room to where he’d tossed off his jacket earlier, pulling it out of his pocket to look at the caller ID. With a sigh, he pulled his finger across the screen to answer it.

“Bucky? It’s Carol. Look, Buck, I’m so sorry. I was totally out of line, it’ll never happen again. I swear on Tom Brady’s knees.”

“Not the best time, Carol.”

Nat immediately tensed, vaulting over the back of the sofa and rushing at him, making grasping motions with her hand. In a moment of sheer insanity fuelled by the still burning anger from the catastrophe of a brunch date earlier, Bucky handed over the phone.

“Hi, Carol?” Nat asked sweetly. “This is Nat, James’ friend.” She sashayed out of the room, giving Bucky a thumbs up before closing her bedroom door behind her. For a split second, Bucky felt bad for Carol. Then he remembered that she, supposedly his friend, had been chatting about him behind his back with some whack job they met on the subway. Realistically, _she_ should also be getting the moniker of Subway Creeper. Carol deserved whatever Nat doled out.

He distracted himself by continuing to click through Steve’s page, comparing everything from their taste in movies to the bars they checked in at. The deeper he got, the more he realised that ‘creeper’ tendencies, like Steve’s smile, seemed to be infectious. Yeah, Steve was hot and they both liked old school Fall Out Boy and everything and anything by Adele, but did that really mean they were soulmates? Bucky hoped so, but he needed to do something about it. The universe had done its thing by throwing him into the path of Sam Wilson, apparently wingman extraordinaire, now it was Bucky’s turn.

Just as he made up his mind to go and retrieve his phone off Nat and allow Carol to grovel for forgiveness, Nat reappeared.

“So?” he asked with interest, twisting in his seat so he could see her as she ambled into the kitchen, now tapping away at her own phone rather than his.

“ _So_ we’ve been invited to an end of summer barbeque at Carol’s tomorrow afternoon. I’ve said we’ll bring chips and dip.”

For the hundredth time that day, Bucky gazed at someone with his jaw gaping open, trying to work out if Nat was joking.

“What? Why?”

“Because you need to meet Steve, and frankly I need to meet Carol, and everyone needs to thank Sam for all the legwork he’s been putting into this with precisely zero reward.”

“But Steve might not even be my soulmate, Nat,” Bucky whined, hugging one of their boringly tasteful beige sofa cushions to his chest, “and Carol betrayed me.”

“This isn’t _Pride and Prejudice_ , James. She hasn’t slighted your honour or wronged you or slandered you at the dance hall. She was trying to be a good friend, she just lacks finesse.”

Bucky narrowed his eyes at her meaningfully, stalking into the kitchen when she turned away to get a glass of water from the sink. “Did you just get sweet-talked by Carol sodding Danvers?” he asked incredulously.

Natasha smiled wickedly and leaned against the sink, sipping her water. “Who sweet-talked who is a matter of opinion.”

Bucky groaned and sloped off towards his bedroom, remembering why he never introduced Carol and Nat before and regretting his life choices.

 

***

 

Carol lived out in Hell’s Kitchen, which meant Bucky had a good forty minute subway ride in which to second guess everything. While they’d still been waiting on the platform, he’d voiced his concerns that maybe not _everyone_ liked five-layer dip, and perhaps they should pick up some guacamole or something on the way. Once Nat had elbowed him onto the train he’d spent ten minutes bemoaning how casually they were both dressed, suddenly certain that everyone else was going to be dolled up to the nines.

“Seriously, James?” Nat had asked. “You’ve told me yourself that you’ve never seen Carol in anything other than workout gear or hoodies, and this is her party. You’ll be fine.”

In the end, Bucky distracted himself by Facebook stalking Steve again. He’d put himself in a self-enforced technology deadzone the evening before, not wanting to be one of those people who already knew everything about someone before they even met them. He’d seen the internet memes. He didn’t want to come across as a loon.

Realistically, he was already a loon. He was only ever putting off the inevitable.

Steve was, at least according to his admittedly tiny internet footprint, perfect to an unfair degree. The most recent public post Bucky could see was of him napping on the floor in a grimy-looking hallway. At first, Bucky had been shocked at the standard of Columbia’s facilities, only to realise during a thorough stalk on the comments (why did Steve have so many good looking female friends? Was there a special breeding programme for statuesque blondes that churned out a conveyer belt of Steves and his female counterparts?) that it was in fact the hallway of a local community college where Steve apparently volunteered as a tutor to underprivileged kids in the evenings.

Bucky spent his evenings watching _Say Yes to the Dress_ with Nat and discussing whether or not they thought sweetheart necklines were the way to go.

He was quickly coming to realise that he wasn’t a good person.

By the time they got off at 50th St and emerged at street level, Bucky had reconsidered how many buttons to leave undone on his button-down at least four times, finally settling on two. Nat was being remarkably calm, all things considered, although she had checked her hair in the carriage window quite a few times before finally reaching the perfect level of mildly-distressed chic.

When they finally reached the address that Carol had given Nat, they stood outside the front door in silence, collecting themselves. Eventually, Nat turned to Bucky, who nodded resolutely, because even if he was a chicken he sure as hell wasn’t going to chicken out now he’d spent over an hour making a five-layer dip whose recipe was so secret that he’d had to ask his mother three times before she’d entrusted him with it.

Silently, Nat leant forward and pressed the buzzer marked _Danvers_. After a second, there was a static-y pop, and a lethargic man’s voice rattled out of the speaker. “Who dares disturb my slumber?”

Bucky and Nat shared a slightly shocked glance, trying to work out the best response.

“Do you know the password?” a second voice enquired through the speaker, before they heard chuckling.

“Um, it’s Bucky and Nat?” Bucky ventured, watching as Nat whipped out her phone and started tapping away.

“You’re not on the list,” insisted the first voice, which was achingly familiar and yet Bucky couldn’t quite place it.

“We come bearing dip,” announced Nat, putting her phone back in her pocket.

“Well in _that_ case,” acquiesced the second voice, while the first chuckled in the background. The door clicked loudly, and Bucky led the way into the hallway of the apartment building, Nat trailing behind him and peering at the mail boxes. Just as the door was swinging shut, a harassed looking man with shaggy black hair and an ill-fitting jacket shouldered through it, arms full of hotdog buns. He wiggled past Nat with a small smile and started up the stairs.

Once Nat had satisfied herself with creeping on Carol’s neighbours, they started the trek up to the fourth floor. Two flights up, a hum of music and chatter started. By the time they reached the landing on the fourth floor, the unmistakable tune of _Backstreet’s Back_ was leaking out of 4A’s door, much to Bucky’s chagrin.

“Seriously?” he hissed at Nat when he saw the joy on her face, “90s boy bands?” Bucky really hoped it was a Bluetooth speaker, or at least an aux cable, and he could do something about the travesty that was Carol’s playlist. He’d known her taste was dubious from that time her boss had called her and the whole bagel place had heard the dulcet tones of Shaggy’s _Boombastic_ , but he had hoped that was a one off.

The door was on the latch, so they knocked out of politeness and then wandered into the house. The door opened straight into a hallway which they branched out in three distinct directions. To their left, he could see a living room, the seats covered in coats. Straight ahead, there appeared to be a kitchen that led out onto a balcony, where there seemed to be gang of people poking at a barbeque. The door off to the right was closed. Leaving their coats on the seats like everyone else had, Nat and Bucky took another moment to collect themselves, Nat putting her hands on Bucky’s shoulders.

“Look, James. No matter how this goes, it will always have been worth it,” she said simply, cutting to the crux of the matter in an impressive but still deeply irritating way.

“Be brave. Take risks. Nothing can substitute experience,” chimed in a voice from the corner. Sitting in a plush wing-backed chair was a dark-haired man wearing grey slacks and a pale green shirt, sleeves rolled up to the elbows. He was wearing sunglasses despite being in the darkest corner of the room and indoors, and on his lap was a fat orange cat which he was stroking in what appeared to be an impression of Blofeld.

“Chewie?” Bucky said in excitement, ignoring the man’s smirk.

“That’s Mr Chewbacca Danvers-Stark to you,” replied the man, continuing to stroke the cat and gaze at them through tinted Ray-Bans.

“Stark?” questioned Nat, cocking her head, “as in..?”

“Tony, for the love of god, when I said _enough sausages for twelve hungry people_ I meant for _one night_. What am I meant to do with two hundred sausages?” Carol stormed into the room, blonde hair streaming behind her and barbeque tool in hand. She seemed to be taking her ‘end of summer’ theme to heart, and so was wearing a sundress covered in small white and blue flowers. Bucky had to say, she was kind of a knockout.

“Sweetheart, you said enough sausages for twelve hungry people _and Chewie_. I worry that you starve him when I’m away,” Tony tickled Chewie behind the ear, making him purr loudly enough that Bucky could hear it across the room. He leaned forwards and whispered dramatically, “she got full custody, very unpleasant.”

Thankfully, Nat seemed just as confused as Bucky. They both watched the conversation like a tennis match, eyes flicking from Tony to Carol and back again.

“Bucky, it’s so great to see you. Thank you so much for coming,” Carol gushed, grabbing Bucky and squeezing him into a bone-crushing hug. “And Nat, it’s good to meet you in person,” she held out a hand and they shook, briskly.

“Aren’t you going to introduce me?” asked Tony from his corner, and Bucky realised with a start that he was one of the voices that had laughed at them over the intercom earlier.

Carol sighed, spinning on her heel and ushering Bucky and Nat in front of her out towards the balcony and the fire escape up onto the roof. When they drew level with Tony, she stopped. “Bucky, Nat, this is Tony Stark.”

“As in, Stark Industries?”

“Yes,” said Tony smugly.

“So, your boss?”

“Unfortunately,” said Carol with a sniff.

“Not just your boss, baby,” Tony amended, starting to tickle Chewie on the tummy and raising his voice slightly over the loud purring. “Also your cat co-parent.”

“You are not Chewie’s parent, Tony,” Carol grumbled.

“She’s just jealous,” Tony whispered conspiratorially. Carol huffed again and led the two of them out onto the balcony.

“I’m so sorry about him,” she groaned as she showed them the drinks table, handing Bucky a bottle opener. “When I first left the Air Force and moved to New York to work for Stark, he gave me an apartment in Stark Tower. At first I thought he was the best boss ever, then I realised he’s just kind of crazy and very lonely and needs someone to talk to at 3am sometimes who isn’t his damn butler. I got Chewie, as I’d always wanted a cat, and now he thinks he has some kind of absentee father’s rights over him.”

Nat laughed and took a swig from her bottle, tossing her hair behind her shoulder. “Sounds intense.”

“Oh, don’t get me wrong, I’d definitely kill for him. Just occasionally I want to actually kill _him_.” Carol accepted the beer that Bucky offered her, cradling it to her chest. “Right, anyway. Let me introduce you to some people.”

Bucky froze and peered around. The encounter with Stark had completely wiped any thoughts of Steve and how close he was to a _potential soulmate_ from his mind, and now all the careful barriers he’d been building in his mind had rushed away and left him vulnerable and unsure. He didn’t see Steve or Sam, which relaxed him a bit, but that didn’t mean they weren't skulking around somewhere.

“Don’t panic, Buck,” Carol laughed knocking him with her hip and motioning that they should follow her over to where a gang of men were trying to out-macho each other around the barbeque while another man and a girl laughed at them. “Sam texted me a minute ago, they’re going to be a bit late.”

Bucky nodded, ripping anxiously at the label on his bottle. He could deal with this. He had Carol, and Nat. God, if everything went wrong at least there’d be Chewie and Tony. If Steve turned out to be his soulmate then _great_ , they could start trying to work something out. Plan a regular date night or something. Book tickets to a game, organise a pizza and movie night with their friends. If he wasn’t, then at least he’d have come to this barbeque, met some cool people. Hell, even if they weren’t actually soulmates, he wouldn’t say no to a date with Steve. As he fretted, Nat grabbed his hand. Their eyes met, and Nat gave him a small smile, and suddenly everything felt okay again.

 

***

 

“So, like Pokémon Go, but soulmates?” Bucky clarified carefully, desperately hoping that he hadn’t got turned around midway through Peter’s explanation of his big idea.

“Dude, yes. Exactly.” Peter nodded sagely, leaning back in his lounger and taking a bite of burger. Within seconds of meeting him, Bucky had identified him as the second voice from the intercom, and had counted himself lucky that at some point when Bucky was on the stairs he had broken away from Stark.

“Surely if you already knew who your soulmate was, as you would have to in order for a pair of matching trackers to be fitted to you, there is no point in having a game? You already know, so you just go with it.”

Peter glowered at Pietro. “Dude, don’t kill my buzz.”

Bucky wasn’t entirely sure how he’d ended up sat at the edge of the party with what was apparently the only soulmarked couple at the event, but he couldn’t say he regretted it. Peter and Pietro seemed to bicker constantly, disagreeing minutely on every topic from salsa to theories of the creation of the universe. Even so, it was impossible to miss the fondness in their eyes when they looked at each other.

“If you were born with the trackers, though,” Peter suggested after a moment.

“So this is all theoretical?” Pietro verified, shifting slightly in his seat to allow Carol to sit down and join them.

“I mean, for the moment, yes. But who knows about the future.”

“Why would a human evolve to have a mechanical chip inside them?” asked Pietro in obvious confusion.

“Christ almighty, Maximoff, I mean…”

“Sorry to disturb you boys,” interrupted Carol, idly fiddling with her watch as she looked at Bucky. “But I was hoping I might borrow Bukcy for a moment. The last of my guests are here.”

“The метро чудак?” enquired Pietro mildly, and Bucky laughed as he recognised the nearest Russian translation he could get for Subway Creeper. Pietro gave him a sly grin, recognising that he understood.

“Oh my god, Maximoff, we’ve talked about this. If you can’t remember the English word, then Google it or mime it, don’t just switch into Russian.”

“Yes, Pietro, the Subway Creeper,” Bucky replied, glad that Peter had fetched him a refill earlier so he had something to do with his hands.

“Why the hell did you invite the Subway Creeper?” demanded Peter as Carol and Bucky got up and moved towards the door to await Sam and Steve’s arrival. “Are you going to set Tony on him?”

“I would find Chewie more intimidating than Tony,” said Pietro, which started up another round of bickering, although Bucky was too far away to hear the lynchpins of their arguments.

Carol started washing glasses as they waited for Sam and Steve to appear. It had taken Bucky and Nat a good couple of minutes to get up all the stairs at a leisurely pace, so he hoped that he had a little more time to compose himself. Wordlessly, he started drying off all the glasses that Carol had washed, lining them up like soldiers across the drying rack.

“Carol?” came a booming voice from the front door, and Bucky took a deep breath. “Carol, its Sam and Steve. I’m so sorry we’re late.”

Bucky tried to move out of the kitchen to greet them, but Carol put a hand to his chest to still him. She put a finger to her lips, and they both listened as Tony started interrogating the newcomers.

“Excuse me Sam-and-Steve, you almost woke up the gentleman of the house.”

“Oh, I’m sorry we disturbed you,” came a voice that Bucky had never heard before. It had a low timbre that carried through the walls, but sounded honestly remorseful for having done wrong.

“Not me, Other-Sam-and-Steve. _Chewie_.”

“Chewie?” Sam sounded just as excited as Bucky had earlier. It seemed that everyone who met Carol developed a mild obsession with her cat.

“He isn’t taking visitors,” snapped Tony, and Carol took that as her cue to walk out into the sitting room, leading Bucky behind her.

“Sam, thank you so much for coming,” she trilled, giving the man a hug and taking his pro-offered bunch of flowers. “Oh, and you must be Steve! It’s lovely to meet you.”

Bucky finally looked away from Sam and Carol to look at Steve, who was already looking at him, smiling. They made eye contact, and Steve’s smile widened. If anything, Steve’s photos hadn’t done him justice – his eyes in real life were bluer, his hair blonder, and his smile more infectious. He was wearing a blue button-down and jeans, both of which were possibly a size too small, judging by the number of muscles popping out in various places to say hello. Standing next to him, Sam looked small, which was utterly ridiculous. Carol looked positively tiny.

“Thank you for having us,” Steve replied politely, handing over a bottle of wine with his good arm. As promised, his other hand was in a cast. The cast was completely covered with signatures and doodles, so many that they all overlapped and spilled into each other, creating a technicolour of names.

“You’re welcome. Everyone else is just through those doors, out on the balcony. Bucky, could you show Steve where to put his coat while Sam and I put these flowers in a vase?” she started moving towards the kitchen, then stopped abruptly, causing Sam to crash into her comically. He started to apologise, but she waved him off, more focussed on the figure still lurking in her sitting room. “Come on Tony, I need help in the kitchen.”

Tony looked dubious but rose anyway, following the other two with Chewie still in his arms. After they’d gone, Bucky realised with a start that he was _alone with Steve_ , and that the task they’d been given was so completely spurious that it was bordering on insulting their intelligence. It was completely bloody obvious where to put your coat, they were just strewn around the room like particularly uninspired Halloween decorations. Bucky gestured around weakly anyway, praying to every god he knew of that he wasn’t making a fool of himself. “Just leave your coat anywhere, I guess. I’d recommend in between two other coats for maximum cat hair avoidance.”

Steve chuckled and walked over to the sofa, lying his coat down carefully and then pulling a blanket over the top. “Ahh, good strategy. Put it straight on the seat and you get residual cat hair, put it on the top and you get the actual cat nesting,” he chuckled to himself. “I volunteered at the animal shelter for a while in college. Amazingly rewarding, but god have I had enough of pet hair.”

They stood in awkward silence for a moment, Bucky shuffling from foot to foot while Steve peered at the photos of her younger brothers Carol had up on her mantelpiece. They smiled at each other blandly, then both looked off in the other direction. The hum of conversation from outside was just loud enough to hear, but too quiet to really make anything out. Through the glass doors, Bucky could see Pietro and Peter stocking up on hotdogs.

“So this is possibly the most awkward situation I’ve ever been in, and god only knows I don’t want it to be,” Steve announced simply. “We’re meant to be soulmates, Bucky. I know we haven’t proved it yet or anything, but let’s be honest. We are,” he chuckled self-deprecatingly, “I mean, what are the chances of you having the same project I’m working on all over your arm, and then having nothing after I break my drawing arm?”

“How did you break it?” Bucky asked suddenly, and then cringed. That was literally the least interesting part of what Steve had just said.

Steve blushed, and it was a beautiful thing to see. Rather than going bright red as Bucky usually did on the rare occasions he blushed (which, according to Nat, made him look like a novelty toilet brush), Steve went a light pink across his cheekbones and ears, biting his bottom lip slightly in embarrassment.

“I fell out of a tree,” he mumbled in response.

“A tree?” queried Bucky. Nat had described Steve as a Boy Scout when she’d first seen him based on his blonde all-Americanness alone. Apparently it stretched to his outside interests too. Bucky didn’t know anyone who’d willingly climbed a tree since the fourth grade.

“There was a bird.” Sam spoke from behind Bucky, sounding thoroughly done with the entire situation. “A baby bird who’d fallen out of its nest. And Captain Clumsy over here decided that the best thing to do was for him to haul his fat ass up a tree to put it back with its family, which he succeeded in doing. Then he fell out of the tree.”

Bucky nodded mutely, desperately trying to think of something to say. He was normally suave, for fuck’s sake. His eighth grade math teacher had called him _debonair_ in a school report. He could talk to anyone, so why the hell not this guy who was probably his soulmate?

Because Steve was undoubtedly a cut above the kind of dude he normally tried to charm, he realised with a start. Normally a cocked eyebrow and a bite of his lip and the guy he wanted got the picture. With Steve, though, he had to be _good enough_. If Steve was his soulmate, then he had to earn his place at Steve’s side. This was a guy who volunteered at an animal shelter even when he was a broke college student, who tutored at a community college on the weekend and who _broke his arm climbing a tree to put a baby bird back in its nest._ He was Prince Charming, and Bucky was basically Gaston.

No one wanted to be soulmates with Gaston.

Bucky felt a bit sick.

“My money was on football injury,” said Carol mildly, shuffling into the sitting room and standing next to Sam. “But the bird thing is way better for picking up guys,” she winked conspiratorially, then looped one arm around Sam’s waist. “Come on, Wilson. Come join the asylum.”

They sauntered out of the room, crushing any of Bucky’s hopes that she would wingman him. He was completely out of his depth.

“So, would you want to go and get coffee?” asked Steve quietly. He sounded nervous. As if Bucky would ever say no.

 

***

 

Steve snorted unattractively (well, as unattractively as it could be when it was _Steve)_ and sprayed a small typhoon of cookie crumbs across the table. “You did _what?”_

Bucky smiled smugly in return, wrapping his hands more tightly around his latte and leaning back in his chair. They’d been at this café that Steve had recommended for just over two hours, although Bucky had stopped noticing the time about ten minutes in. Steve had barrelled straight in with a brief personal history, detailing his upbringing with his (frankly amazing-sounding) mother, his time as a skinny little shit who picked all the right fights with all the wrong people, and his epic round-the-US road trip which had resulted in him somehow going to college in Georgetown rather than staying local. He’d transferred to NYU when his mom got sick, then moved to Columbia as a TA. He still went home for dinner every Sunday.

Bucky was sprung.

After an hour of Steve waxing lyrical about his own life and family, he’d gone silent, and it had become embarrassingly obvious to anyone with ears and even slight mental function that Bucky had said precisely nothing about his own. He’d decided to remedy that in the only way he knew how. He talked about Natasha.

“So I was just sauntering around the school, looking for my sister’s Chemistry file,” he began.

“Having broken in,” Steve butted in.

“Yes, having broken in, but still on the hunt for a lost Chem file, as any good brother would, when suddenly there’s all these lights and shouting, and next thing I know I’m in the police station, all by myself, thinking about how my mom’s going to be so fucking disappointed and how my dad’s going to kill me, but also mostly that I didn’t find Becca’s file so now she’s still not going to be able to do that homework.”

Steve sucked at the straw on his milkshake, distracting Bucky momentarily. At first, Bucky had thought he was on a date with some walking, talking American stereotype who constantly drank milkshakes with over-sized straws and called people _Ma’am_ and had very vocal opinions on the Superbowl, but now he could really go with the whole straw thing. Steve’s mouth was distracting enough when he was smiling, or talking about all the underprivileged kids who had become passionate about the Alamo under his tutelage. When he was trying to get to the last reserves of peanut butter milkshake from the bottom of his glass? Probably illegal in several conservative states.

Not that Bucky was complaining.

He was shocked out of his reverie by the reappearance of the waitress, who wordlessly took their plates away. Bucky ran his hand through his hair, and continued. “So I’m sat there, pretty much up shit creek without a paddle, when the door opens again and this girl comes in. She’s petite and red-headed, and I recognise her as the new kid. I think of all the rumours I’ve heard about her, how she’s killed a guy with nothing but one of those novelty cracker ball-mazes, and I’m basically shitting myself.”

“Weren’t you one of the bad boys at school, then?”

Bucky scoffed again, leaning forward conspiratorially. “Oh, I was. Nat was worse.”

Steve smiled widely, and Bucky had to work to stay on track.

“She sits down, looks me straight in the eyes, and says, _‘aren’t you the one with the crappy name?’,_ and the rest is history. She still insists on calling me James, though,” he finished with a chuckle.

“I’d love to meet her,” Steve replies, and Bucky is struck by the honest interest in his words. Most of his dates get pissy and bored when he starts talking about Nat, immediately assume that he’s secretly in love with her. Steve seems to get it, and that means more than he can say.

“What about you and Sam?”

“Nowhere near as exciting,” he warns, smiling broadly at the waitress when she returns to collect his glass. Bucky can’t really find it in himself to care, though. Just sitting and listening to Steve’s voice is enough.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! I hope everything made sense, and that you enjoyed it.  
> If anyone is interested in me carrying on, please do let me know - I have more to say, but I'm completely aware that I tend to ramble like a crazy person.  
> If you're willing to beta read for me, drop me a line! I'm flying solo at the moment :')


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